


A Strength That Cannot Be Measured

by Devilc



Category: Terminator Salvation (2009), Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Alternate Timeline, Alternate Universe, Crossover, M/M, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-15
Updated: 2010-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-06 07:57:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devilc/pseuds/Devilc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus Wright gets sent back and meets a teenaged John Connor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Strength That Cannot Be Measured

**Author's Note:**

> But wait, Devilc, don't T:SCC and T:S follow different timelines? Well, they do. And the joy of all that is, you can always forge an alternate timeline. So, in this 'verse, figure that John meets Kate Brewster somewhere down the road but that she is dead by 2028 (which further explains 2028!John's alienation and reliance on Metal) and that some of the events of the last 2 episodes of T:SCC will happen, but others will not.
> 
> This story starts shortly after S2 of T:SCC starts.
> 
> I loved the character of Marcus Wright and wondered what would happen if he got sent back.

There was a flash of light and the violent crackle of lightning on the lawn just as he, Mom, Cameron, and Derek started hauling groceries out of the truck. When it finished, they saw a crouching dark haired man. Mom and Derek were on him in an instant, guns drawn, while they screamed "John get back in the truck!" Cameron methodically advanced, grocery bags still in hand.

The man, solidly built, shook his head dazedly and then said, "Well, _shit_," when he saw the trio approaching him, and very slowly stood, hands raised. He was quite calm and unresisting when they took him into the house.

John sighed, counted to 30, picked up several dropped bags of groceries (he won't let the ice cream melt) and walked into the house. He didn't even bother to look in the living room where they'd taken _him_. Just put the ice cream in the freezer, rested his head against the door, and blew out a huge breath.

The man sat quietly in the chair while his mom and Derek, weapons still drawn and pointed, shot questions at him. The man was quiet, but not calm. _He's coiled_ John thought, _ready to spring into action at a moment's notice. Like Derek. Like Mom_. The moment John entered the doorway, the man's attention snapped to him.

His steel blue eyes captured John's attention. The look in them was intent, focused, assessing. It didn't remind John of a blue-eyed wolf or of the thousand yard stare that still lingered in Derek's eyes. It echoed the look he saw all the time in Cameron's eyes, the cool, calculating intensity of _Metal_.

The man smiled softly and said to him, "You got the location right, but your timing leaves a bit to be desired, Connor. I've already died for you twice, let's hold off a bit on the third."

John found his voice. "Who are you?"

The man eased forward slowly, resting his elbows on his knees, studying the floor -- as if they were the only two people in the room, as if Derek didn't have a shotgun with Teflon coated shot scant inches from his head. When he looked up again he said, "Marcus Wright."

John looked at Derek.

"The name means nothing to me," Derek growled back.

Cameron started and blinked rapidly, cued into action, retrieving stored data. "Marcus Wright," she said in a flat, matter-of-fact tone, "cyborg. Prototype for the 800 series." She blinked again, looked at the rest of them and explained, "Previous terminator units were pure androids and easily detected --"

"Yeah, the 600s had that shitty rubber skin," Derek said.

"The 800-series are cybernetic, having human skin, hair, nails, eyes, tongue, and external genitalia. The Marcus Wright prototype has a first generation neural interface as well as several functioning internal organs: brain, heart, lungs, and modified gastrointestinal tract. Skeletal and neural upgrades are served by a small power cell located in the upper thorax. The prototype went missing 2018 after successful infiltration of the Resistance. Presumed destroyed in a battle between Skynet and Resistance forces at Skynet headquarters. There are no further records." She paused and cocked her head. "The Marcus Wright prototype has been further modified. His heart is now mechanical --"

"Yeah, well, I kind of gave the original to John in 2018 --"

"-- and the control chip is missing from the base of his skull. All other systems appear to be intact." She paused again and cocked her head the other way. "How are you feeling, Marcus Wright?"

He rolled his eyes in exasperation and said dryly, "At first, like Han Solo after Princess Leia thawed him out, but I'm better now. And it's just Marcus."

"So ..." Mom slowly inched her gun down, "you're Cameron's ... father."

Marcus and Cameron spoke simultaneously -- "No!" and, "I do not have a father. I was built. Marcus is not my template. Allison Young is."

"Why are you here?" Mom asked.

Marcus's dark blue eyes flicked to Cameron and Derek and there was something almost insolent in the way he tilted his head as he replied to her, "For the same reasons they are." Pause. "Well, are you going to get me some clothes or do you plan to keep on admiring the view?"

~oo(0)oo~

"So, if we find out where Cyberdyne has your body hidden and destroy it, we can stop the 800 series from being built." His mother frightened John sometimes. Like now, at the kitchen table, paused in the act of cleaning a gun, hands steepled in thought.

"Mom," John said quietly, "you're talking about killing him --"

Marcus shrugged and spooned in another mouthful of Total. "I didn't mind dying that much the first time." His eyes glanced meaningfully down at his body, "It's being brought back like this that I'm not quite so fond of."

Derek ran his finger around the rim of his coffee cup. "It will just stop the 800s from being built, not the 600s --"

"Not the Harvesters, HKs, T-1s, or those damn killcycles, either," Marcus cut in, not caring about the glare Derek shot his way. "Besides, I'm not the only person that Dr. Serena Kogan tapped for a body. I woke up in a medlab one day in 2018 and I wasn't the only --" he twitched at the memory and shook his head. "I'm just the one where it finally worked. If not me, then somebody else," he finished quietly.

Mom gave a long, shuddering sigh and began slotting the pistol back together.

"So let's waste this Dr. Kogan," Derek said.

Marcus shook his head. "You can't. She died in 2004. Cancer." He chuckled darkly and tapped his spoon against the edge of the bowl. "I gave my body to science because I hadn't done shit with my life and wanted some good to come from my death. And look how _that_ turned out. Figures."

"But you say you gave me your heart," John murmured.

Marcus drank the milk out of the bowl. "Yeah, there is that." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "And then you put me on ice for a decade."

"Waste not, want not," Derek muttered.

~oo(0)oo~

There was something between Marcus and Derek. Something unsettling and ... electric.

They were almost the same height and build. They moved alike, reacted alike, thought alike. They were both paranoid as hell.

You'd think they'd be in sync, but the tension between them snapped and crackled.

Derek divided the world into People and Metal and the problem was Marcus didn't quite fit into either of those boxes. Derek didn't trust him. Marcus had no use for Derek's attitude. Or for the nights and days that Derek spent away from the house. Marcus asked Derek questions about that and ... he liked the answers he got even less than Mom did.

Even Riley remarked about how all they did was "piss in each other's cheerios."

And yet, when they needed to, like on that day when Cromartie kidnapped Michelle, Charley's wife, Marcus and Derek worked together like they'd been born to it, like they'd known each other and teamed up so long and so often they could anticipate each other's moves, complete each other's thoughts. They walked into a room and Hell followed with them -- but only if they wanted it to.

They were like magnets with the same poles -- their sameness pushed them apart.

John admired both of them. He tried desperately hard not to let himself get attached, because Marcus has come back to die for him if that's what it takes. He worried that some bad day Marcus and Derek would end up killing each other, because when they were not reacting to a crisis, or marching to Sarah's orders, they could barely speak a civil word. And losing one or both of them that way? That would be the worst.

~oo(0)oo~

It got really ugly between them on the day Riley tried to kill herself and his mother got shot. Everybody was on edge and wired, and when they got home, Marcus snapped at Derek that he was "not half the man your kid brother was at 16."

Derek's eyes grew flinty and hard and John saw his fist clench. Bile rose in John's throat.

But then Marcus noticed how they'd all grown deathly silent. "Where is Kyle Reese?" he asked in hushed tones.

"We don't talk about Kyle," Mom replied softly.

Marcus swallowed hard. His voice was tight and strained when he spoke again, "What happened?"

"John sent him back. He died saving my life." Her voice was tiny and brittle.

Marcus chewed his bottom lip for a moment. "He saved my life, too. More than once."

Mom looked away and when she looked back, John could see her eyes glisten. "I'll take you to where he is."

"I'd like that." Marcus didn't speak for the rest of the day.

He and Derek acted like the other didn't exist for the next week.

~oo(0)oo~

"I don't think of you as -- I don't think of you like I think of Cameron," John said very quietly when he came downstairs in the middle of the night and found Marcus sitting on the living room couch playing solitaire on the coffee table.

"Pretty shitty day, wasn't it?" Marcus replied in a flat tone. "And, in your case, that's saying something."

Yeah, because there was probably never going to be another person in the world who could say that my now ex-girlfriend, Riley, came from the future and was seduced by my Uncle's now ex-girlfriend, Jesse, and brought back here so that I'd get emotionally attached to her and then not trust Cameron (or even Marcus) anymore when Jesse murdered Riley and framed Cameron for it. He sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair.

Marcus flapped a few cards down, looked at the table, groaned, scooped the cards together, asked, "You up for a game of Speed?" and shuffled the deck before John could answer. "Jesse won't meddle in your affairs again." He swallowed hard before continuing, "Derek saw to that."

John sat on the floor opposite Marcus as he divided the deck and started setting the cards out.

"You don't think of me like Cameron," Marcus said softly over the noise of falling cards. "But you don't think of me like you'd think of any other person. Humans bury their dead. You didn't bury me."

~oo(0)oo~

It finally came to a head between Derek and Marcus two days later on a warm summer afternoon. Marcus had a knack for small electronics and their lawnmower (electric) died on him earlier that morning. John was out in the shed helping him because it was the solenoid and that's a big magnet and it was a little hard for Marcus to work with magnets given the way they wanted to stick to him. As John worked, Marcus talked to him about meeting a teen-aged Kyle Reese (and a little girl Kyle called Star) in what was left of LA, and having "this kid your age look out for me and teach _me_ the ropes," when a shadow fell across the worktable. Derek stood in the doorway, filling it, blocking out the light.

He and Marcus looked at each other for a long moment and something about it ... the way their gazes were weighted/charged/loaded/something that John didn't have a word for, didn't think there could even _be_ a word for, had him shivershaking inside. It felt like the calm before the storm, but different.

With a coolness that John would love to have, Marcus cocked his head at him and said, "Take 10, John."

So he did, leaving the door open behind him so that he could hear and take action if he needed to fetch Cameron to break them up.

Silence as wet and leaden as a summer day in Mississippi followed him across the lawn, broken only by the ominous sound of the door shutting.

He didn't want to -- he needed to. He knew how to peek in a window without being seen. He needed to keep an eye on this, damn it, so things didn't get out of hand.

What he saw shocked him so much he almost stepped over to the window to get a full view.

Marcus seized Derek's face in his hands and for a heart-stopping moment John thought this was it -- _this is where Marcus crushes his head or breaks his neck_.

That they would kiss had never occurred to him.

Only it was not kissing like John had ever seen or done before. It's as if they were kissing (and after the initial shock, Derek's full on kissing Marcus back) so that they _don't_ break each other's neck. Like it's the only way that each could get the other to shut up.

Marcus and Derek both clawed at Derek's shirt, and a few seconds later John saw the fabric rip. He thought to himself that this was not the pretty stuff of romantic movies (not that he'd seen a lot of those), nor the professionally lighted and staged stuff of porn. This was something much rawer and more visceral. (Also, Marcus and Derek didn't look like they were bored and just following the script.)

John's legs wobbled like Jello as he turned and headed for the house. At his mother's inquisitive glance he waved his hands and said, "It's fine, they're working it out." His voice at least _sounded_ calm and even. He prayed she wouldn't go and see for herself.

He decided to head out about an hour later with some cold Cokes. He even got his hand on the doorknob before the noises stopped him like a slap in the face. Okay. The shed was off limits until further notice. He headed back in, mechanically put the Cokes back into the fridge, pulled open a new issue of Guns and Ammo and looked at the pages as if he could actually read right now.

"John, what's --" Mom began, but he cut her off, voice almost screechy.

"They're kissing and making up."

Her eyes flew open and she shot to her feet and took a step almost as if she were going to go out to the shed, but she collected herself and headed to the bedroom, returning a few minutes later with a brace of pistols. John supposed that where some mothers knitted, or crocheted, or did needlepoint when they were thinking and needed something to do with their hands, his cleaned her guns. (And if she ran out of guns, but not out of things to mull over, she'd sharpen her knives. She'd acquired an impressive collection of those, not that they did jack and shit against Metal.)

Cameron went out and came back shortly before he and Mom called it a night. She said that heat signatures confirmed that Derek and Marcus were still in the shed. She started to describe what she'd seen going on, but they both cut her off.

~oo(0)oo~

John tiptoed out of the house in the middle of the night. A lone cricket chirped as he made his way across the lawn and the grass felt cool and wet against his bare feet. Cameron stood a few feet back from the shed, looking toward the window, head tilted to the side, ~~thinking about~~ analyzing what she saw. Being merely human, John had to get right up to the glass to see Marcus and Derek, sleeping naked on the floor, spooned, Marcus with his arm around Derek, pulling him close.

He turned as silently as possible, took Cameron's hand in his and lead her back into the house, up to his room. They sat on the bed and he tried to think of what to say to her, how to explain what she saw, when she asked if humans slept like that.

"Yes," he squeaked. "It's comforting." He thought of all the times he woke up as a little boy with his mother wrapped around him, protecting him even as she slept.

"Do you want to sleep like that?"

John didn't think she fully understood what she asked, but his heart pounded triple time in his chest and his breath hitched at the thought. "You don't sleep," he finally said.

"But I can pretend to. Do you want me to pretend to?"

His whole body surged with heat and he managed to say "Yes" in a thin and papery voice.

He was hard and throbbing as he nestled in behind her. Doubtless she noticed. Doubtless she knew the biological significance of it. Mercifully she said nothing. Just lay still and quiet, pretending to sleep. He stifled the urge to rub, to rock against her. She'd let him if he tried. Probably let him ... fuck ... her if he asked. She might even have some of the correct emotional responses. But she didn't love him.

(She never will.)

(No matter how much she said she did.)

(Or how much he wanted it.)

~oo(0)oo~

He slept for shit, which explained why he was in the kitchen, sipping a cup of OJ when they slipped in during the gray time just before dawn. Both were shirtless and Marcus's jeans had a busted zipper. They didn't blush, but John sure as hell did when he saw how they'd worked each other over. Derek had hickeys like a wreath of roses around his neck and a bruise on his left wrist that clearly came from a hand clamped around it like a manacle. He walked a bit like his insides were fragile, too. Marcus had a double bite mark on his right shoulder, and he winced a bit when he shrugged in reply to a question John asked with his eyes. As he passed by the table, John could see that he had some wicked looking scratches on his shoulders and flanks and as well as some bruises on the small of his back which peeked above the waistline of his jeans. They looked suspiciously like clenched fingers.

But mostly it was the look in their eyes. They were in sync now.

Marcus hung in doorway to the hall and beckoned for Derek to come, and after Derek stepped through, heading down the hall towards the shower, Marcus said, calm and collected as ever, "We're going to clean up and grab a nap and then fix the lawnmower after the sun comes up. It's ... not a good idea for you to go into the shed until after we're done."

"So noted." John said, voice raspy and dry.

~oo(0)oo~

At breakfast they wore nearly identical blue jeans and black shirts on and they completed each other's thoughts and ... that haunted, hungry look had gone from Derek's eyes, replaced by something sated and centered.

Mom looked at them and then at him and lifted an eyebrow.

And John wondered if his future self sent Marcus back not for himself, but for something else entirely.

**Author's Note:**

> Has a companion piece in [This is the Army of None](http://archiveofourown.org/works/138018)


End file.
